Mirrors Darkly Must Reflect
by Adrian Nox
Summary: Fewer things leaves a more powerful echo than a sibling dying for the other. And while John reacts with dread and Dean with rejection, Sam dreams. But dreams fade. And in the end, memories wouldn't have changed anything.
1. Weave the Mirror's Magic Sights

**Disclaimer: **I own absolutely nothing.  
><strong>Warnings: <strong>Violence, Minor Language, OCs, Unbeta'd (all mistakes my own)  
><strong>Pairings: <strong>implied John/Mary  
><strong>Spoilers: <strong>Season 1-3, minor spoiler for John Winchester arc in season 4

**Description: **Fewer things leaves a more powerful echo than the death of two siblings in sacrifice for one another. And while some react with dread and others rejection, a few dream. But dreams fade. And in the end, memories wouldn't have changed anything.

**A/N: **So this started out as something of a flashfic/one-shot-ish, before I decided to add chapters to it. (I would once again like to blame drabble-writing.) Anyways, this first chapter is John's view, reposted. Tomorrow, or more accurately, later on today will be Dean's chapter, and the day after, Sam. All three chapters are going to be entirely different styles of writing. Sam and Dean's chapters are based on the fact that the brothers hunted a werewolf when they were kids while John's provides a more general arc for the story. The chapter titles are lines taken from Tennyson's _The Lady of Shallot. _Enjoy!

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><p>Seventeen years ago, John Winchester hunted a werewolf and watched a sister and a brother die. Even as he raised his gun, he knew it was too late. The next few minutes were a blurred mass of blood, snarls, ripping, screams and <em>ohgodi'mnotgoingtobeintime<em>. Those minutes ended with a werewolf's head cranked around 180 degrees, bullet buried deep inside, the sister's chest half-carved open, and the brother's neck snapped with a shattering _crack_.

Five years ago, John Winchester ordered his youngest son to leave and never come back. His eldest looked at him after the youngest left and all he could see was an echo of that face unable to understand why a brother would ever leave.

Seventeen years ago an ambulance screamed its way to the park and John Winchester watched the sister's eyes become empty and haunted as she begged for her brother between wet coughs, unable to understand why he was gone.

One year ago, John Winchester put his head next to the son he had just sold his soul to save and whispered, "If you can't save Sammy, you might have to kill him." His eldest stared in shock, unable to understand how he could be expected to kill the brother he had always sworn to protect.

Seventeen years ago, the doctors told John Winchester that her heart gave out from too much blood loss, too much trauma, too much shock. Too much. But he could hear the nurses whisper. A serious injury, they said, but she was young, whole life ahead of her, such a bright laugh, but she loved her brother more than anything and didn't it seem like she just gave up?

One week ago, John Winchester watched helplessly as Alistair snickered his way over and showed him Dean, clutching his brother's lax body and gently stroking the lifeless head lolling against his shoulder. And as Dean screamed for Sam, all he could see was a pair of stunned eyes unable to understand how the world could continue to exist without a brother.

Seventeen years ago, John Winchester went home, dropped his bag, and pulled both his boys into a hug. When they asked him what was the matter, he simply shook his head and held them closer because an idea was slowly growing that if he ever lost one son he'd lose the other as well. He dreamt of lost eyes and a desperate face for weeks after.

Yesterday, Azazel died. Sam lived. Dean sold his soul. And deep in the bowels of hell, Alistair crowed with triumph because the Winchesters had lost the battle the moment Dean ensured he would die and Sam would live.

Today, John Winchester stood at the gates of hell with the demon's plans for Sam echoing in his ears and smiled because the Winchesters had won the war the moment Sam became Dean's brother. It had always been about Sam, but fate, destiny, demons, and angels had forgotten that Sam had always been about Dean. And even if Sam let go of Dean, Dean would never let go of him.

Tomorrow, John Winchester will look for Mary and while he's searching maybe he'll find a girl with a bright laugh and lost eyes dancing and playing among the stars with her brother.

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><p><em>Please drop me a note on what you thought of it—praises and critiques. I know I always feel lame for just saying 'good job' or 'bad job' to a fic, but honestly, as a writer, even that is greatly appreciated.<em>

_- Nox_


	2. The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side

**Disclaimer: **I own absolutely nothing.

**A/N: **_Please read reposted Author's Note for chapter one._ I don't feel very confident about this chapter, I'm afraid. Maybe it's just because it's my first time writing in this style, I don't know… I've been trying to really work on normal descriptive writing over all (did you know adverbs are from the devil?), so let me know what you think. Also, let me know if the present action and the flashback action was confusing. And finally (adverbs _bad_), keep in mind each of these chapters are independent and in different writing styles, but will also interrelate and overlap with one another.

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><p>"Who was she?" Dean stared down at the gravestone for a moment longer before switching his gaze to his father. Fifteen feet away, Sam was curled up on the backseat of the Impala having <em>finally <em>been released from the hospital. Even thinking about it in the vaguest of terms sucked Dean back into a detailed living memory of Sam hurling himself at the werewolf and slamming it away before it could attack a vulnerable Dean whose gun had been knocked yards away.

Dean jerked his head to the side with sudden focus. _The present. This is the present, that was the past and Sam's ok. He's fine. _John stared, face lax and empty, at the gravestone and Dean wondered if he was remembering as well.

"An older sister."

"What?"

John abruptly slumped his shoulders and jammed one hand into his jean pocket before pinching the bridge of his nose with his other. On any other day it would have been amusing—a reminder of how much Sam was like their dad—but today it radiated guilt, shame, and failure to protect both his sons.

"She was an older sister." He repeated in a dull monotone as if that explained everything. Then again, maybe it did.

Dean looked back down the slightly smaller gravestone next to the girl's. A boy's name. Only thirteen or fourteen with same date of death. A sister and a brother.

"It was a hunt eight years ago. Another werewolf." His former monotone had vanished, replaced by an undercurrent of undefinable emotion. "They were both walking home in the park and the werewolf attacked the boy. She...hit the werewolf mid-leap and wrestled it away from her brother. I was too far away and she was fighting it so hard and it just became a mass of limbs...there wasn't a clear shot."

And just like that Dean is back in two months ago watching with growing horror as his fourteen year-old kid brother wrestles a full-grown werewolf and his dad screams for Sam and its clear that there's no clear shot and getting close to the thing is equivalent to kneeling down and politely requesting for it to rip your head off but _hell _if he's going to let this thing kill his brother.

The crack of repeated gunshots snaps him awake. He started to sit up and instantly regretted the idea because—_damnit_—if it doesn't feel like his neck's been snapped in two. The werewolf must have flung him into a tree when he tried to wrestle it off Sam.

Hang on.

Werewolf.

_Sam. _

**Shit**.

Ignoring the crippling pain in his neck and head, Dean rolled over the side, forced himself onto his hands and knees, and promptly began a brutal cycle of _retch, black out, retch, black out. _When the spots behind his eyes finally disappeared along with most of the disorientating nausea, he worked up the courage to look up to what was hands-down the worst image of his life.

John was leaning over an unresponsive Sam, his hands and pants coated with slick blood as he pressed down with desperate intensity on Sam's stomach with his jacket. It took nearly five minutes for Dean to drag himself to Sam and once he made it he had to fight down the urge to retch again because—_shit_ _shit_ _shit—_it looked _bad. _Sam entire torso consisted of four parallel slashes which started shallow in his upper left chest and carved steadily downwards and steadily deeper into his right hip. Despite the intense pressure being applied to the slashes, dark blood continued leaking from beneath the jacket and pooling around Sam's body with steady regularity.

Somewhere in the mix of the blood, the retching, and the debilitating pain he registered his dad talking about how they had to get Sam to the hospital, but with every passing second even the urgent "_Dean_" sounded less like talking and more like a fading buzzing sound. Everything shifted to a muffled blur.

When he finally woke in a hospital bed, Dean couldn't remember much of any of the journey out of the woods, but if his dad's face was anything to go by, it wasn't good—Dean just about unconscious from a severe concussion and strained neck, Sam bleeding out, and a ten-mile hike to civilization. Yeah, it probably wasn't good. And then later on there was the infection and the double flat-lining in surgery and that moment when he realized Sam was gone and they might not be able to bring him ba...

Swallowing the bile that had risen in the back of his mouth, Dean turned away from the grave and gazed at brown flop of hair leaning against the window of the Impala. _Alive. He's alive and we're fine. _With that reassurance, he turned back towards John who hadn't moved a muscle since his first description of the siblings. "What happened to them?"

"They both died."

Well, obviously. But there was something deeper. Something more to this story because the parallelism was just too strong to ignore.

"How?"

"The boy tried to fight it off his sister, but it knocked him backwards, snapping his neck. I finally got close enough to shoot it off her, but by then it had carved open a good portion of her chest. She crashed during surgery and they couldn't bring her back."

They both walked back to the car in silence because, after that, what was there to say? How does one react to a story of two siblings who fought a werewolf for each other when now, eight years later, the same story nearly repeated itself to the same tragic end?

On the drive to Bobby's, Dean studied the picture his Dad had handed him when they got into the car. Someone had taken a series of pictures and minimized them so that they all fit on the space of one standard photo. It was faded with some rips around the edges, but the images were still clear. Dean's eyes flicked from picture to picture—wrestling, hugging, the brother hoisting his sister in the air... Throughout all of them, though, was laughter and a casual closeness in proximity that spoke of an ingrained intimacy so often rare in siblings.

Dean's eyes bored into the picture with such intensity it was a miracle that it didn't burst spontaneously into flames. The brother had died. She had done everything she could to save him—hurled herself in front of monster she could not have comprehended to save him—and he had died anyway. A wave of admiration washed over him, because that he could understand; the need to protect a brother before yourself was ingrained so deeply in his identity that to take it away would destroy everything that made "Dean Winchester." Admiration drained away and guilt and shame slammed into him with such intensity that Dean had the overwhelming desire to curl into the door of the Impala. What had he been doing during the whole attack? Lying on the ground looking pathetic while Sam threw himself in front of werewolf then spending more time moaning about a pathetic head wound while Sam was being carved open.

Sam had diedbecause he had failed to protect him. He had one job and he screwed it up and Sam had _died._ It was only sheer luck that the doctors managed to bring him back. Just a little more blood loss, a slightly stronger infection and Sam would be dead because of _his _failure_. _Because he had been too scared of being ripped open and hadn't got the guts to take the son of a bitch head-on so his brother had to pick up the slack.

Dean's jaw tightened with resolve. It wasn't going to happen again. Not today. Not tomorrow. And certainly not while he had any say about it. He doesn't care what it takes, what it costs him to keep Sam alive—if it means pissing Sam off, telling his Dad to shove it, or even being torn to shreds. Sam will _never_ be the younger brother who died because his older sibling failed to protect him.

Eight years ago, a sister tried to save her younger brother and failed.

But she didn't know the things he does.

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><p><em>Please drop me a note on what you thought of it—praises and critiques. I know I always feel lame for just saying 'good job' or 'bad job' to a fic, but honestly, as a writer, even that is greatly appreciated.<em>

_- Nox_


	3. Through a Mirror Clear

**Disclaimer: **I own absolutely nothing.

**A/N: **And here be the final chapter. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on all three chapters—the symmetry, overlaps, symbolism, foreshadowing, whether or not you thought it worked, etc. Enjoy!

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><p>"What do you remember?"<p>

That appeared to be the question of the day. The doctors, the nurses, the policemen, Dad, and heck, even Dean all wanted to know what he remembered. Essentially, not all that much.

He remembers tackling the werewolf away from Dean, then everything compressed into _chaos__bloodfirecoldpaindeanblood_ of which the only moments of clarity consisted of an odd burning-ice feeling that was probably his torso being sliced open and something along the idea of being carried out of the woods.

They say he flatlined twice from complications involving infection.

There was something else, though. But he doesn't tell them because he honestly doesn't know what to say or how to explain it, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If he shuts his eyes and thinks very hard, he can see their faces—similar, young faces, one sharp and defined, surrounded by wavy brown hair and brilliant hazel eyes, and the other stronger, older, shrouded in long, dark hair with a constant laugh and a lost expression which seemed to disappear whenever it neared it's companion.

He remembers their silent shifting and whispers which cloaked the musky trees when he entered the woods. He could not see them, but he heard their singing while he crouched behind a roughened tree, heard their murmur a moment before the werewolf attacked, and heard their tears splash onto cold dirt and damp leaves when Dean was knocked aside and he was shredded by razor claws. Beyond the werewolf's brutal snarl, he could see them then, ethereal, cloaked in pale moonlight. Compared to them, the world was muffled and distant. Even the violent retorts of his father's handgun firing silver bullets into the werewolf and the abrupt retraction of the claws embedded in his chest were drifting away, a tenuous thing compared to their pulsing whispers.

He remembers he tried to go to them. Twice. The older one always laughed and pushed him back with gentle hands while the younger danced around him with an energy that never ceased. And sometimes when that odd pulsing noise that surrounded him hesitated or faltered, they would clap their hands and feet in a wild, joyous dance and remind it how to beat. They sang, weaving words with their pale hands and coaxing melodies until they blossomed into shimmering colors.

He remembers they were in the hospital when he woke to find Dean asleep against his bed. A warm breath ruffled past his hair and touched Dean's head like a gentle caress. But the tone of their song became sorrowful and Sam wished he could understand their shrouded words because they curled around Dean and whispered about future guilt and regret.

Eventually, Dean snapped awake (abruptly enough to unbalance his chair and tip himself onto the floor to Sam's unending amusement) and chewed him out for "going Rambo on a _werewolf_" complete with "What the _hell _were you thinking?" and "You scared the shit out of me, Sammy" and "If you _ever _do that again, I'll kill you myself." Dad didn't say much, but it was fairly obvious to just about anyone that it was taking every ounce of his determination and strength not to collapse from weeks of near sleeplessness combined with pressure of witnessing the serious injury of one son and the near-death of the other.

It took two months before they could leave the hospital with Sam's near-fatal wound and Dean's brutal combo of a dangerous concussion and seriously strained neck. When they did, Sam spent nearly all his time sleeping, both in the car and the various motels, before they reached Bobby's house.

He remembers they stopped once at a graveyard before heading off, but he didn't ask why and obeyed his father's command to "Rest up, I just need drop by somewhere real quick." He must have drifted off at one point because the next moment they were on the way to Bobby's and Dean was glaring at a picture as if it personally offended him, but tucked it away into his jacket before Sam could catch a glimpse of its contents.

The dream was already fading from memory, but if he had to describe it, he'd have said it was a story about two brothers whose greatest weakness was each other, but as long as they were together neither fate nor destiny could control them because their greatest weakness was also their greatest strength.

He never dreams of them again until the night of his twenty fourth birthday (the first day of his next year and the first day of Dean's last.) He wakes in the morning (the second day of his next year and the second day of Dean's last) to a warm breeze passing by and a quiet song echoing in his ears, but he can't remember what he dreamt.

He wishes he could.

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><p><em>Please drop me a note on what you thought of it—praises and critiques. I know I always feel lame for just saying 'good job' or 'bad job' to a fic, but honestly, as a writer, even that is greatly appreciated.<em>

_- Nox_


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